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Conservation and Management

A relatively small number of non-industrial private forest (NIPF) owners in the United States has recently expressed interest in cooperating with one another at scales broader than their individual properties. There are many good reasons to do so, which would enhance their individual ownership benefits, as well as the suite of greater public benefits that accrue from a privately owned forest landscape.

The increasing number of family forest owners presents a challenge to effective outreach. Family woodland in some parts of the country represents the dominant ownership type. Sustained provision of a host of greater social goods and services depends on functional forest landscapes, yet fragmentation and parcelization of family woodlands pose a threat. Segmentation of the family owner audience into different types, and targeting of outreach toward two specific decision making junctures, may improve our ability to reach this important audience.

Harvesting is widespread across the western two-thirds of Massachusetts and is expected to continue into the future. Comprehensive spatial data on harvesting activities are generally lacking, particularly for the non-industrial private forest (NIPF) lands that comprise ~80% of forests in the state.

Across the eastern United States, hemlock is being killed slowly by the hemlock woolly adelgid, and rapidly by pre-emptive salvage logging. Investigators from the Harvard Forest, Harvard University, University of Bayreuth, University of California at Irvine, University of Massachusetts, University of New Hampshire, University of Vermont, and the Woods Hole Research Center have begun a long-term experimental study on how the loss of hemlock will effect plant physiology, forest biodiversity and community structure, ecosystem dynamics, carbon storage, and stream hydrology.